After a long delay, most G7 countries eventually released their Open Data Action Plans to realize their commitments to five core principles, including making data open by default. While multilateral agreements always catch the eyeballs of media and the public, it is as important for us to follow the development of local open data initiatives. Cities are the bases for political interactions between people and government. Local authorities are responsible for releasing information relevant to our daily lives, such as approval notices for changing land use near your home, or a council’s decision to remove the bus line you ride every day.

Even though Canada has taken the most positive steps among the G7, there is still room for improvement for their municipal policies regarding what data should be public, how to make data public and how to implement policy.

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“Open by default” is rarely mentioned

The first principle of the G8 Charter is that government data should be “open by default.” This principle means that “all government data” will be published openly unless specified with “legitimate reasons,” and it applies to “national, federal, local, or international government.” However, among the Canadian municipal policies that we found, only the City of Kitchener mentioned the exact phrase of “open by default” in their policy commitments. Five other cities have a close fit, such as “making the disclosure of government-held information an automatic process wherever possible” (Toronto) and sharing “the greatest amount of data possible”(Hamilton). However, the City of London and Brampton take the opposite approach. The former sat up a working group to “develop criteria to guide decision-making around what data sets may be released,” and the latter would only open data “that the City has approved for.” We believe such an approach falls short of proactive disclosure in our guidelines and has the potential to hinder the openness of data.

Formats of data are not specified

Formats of the open data are important. Sunlight goes a long way to explain and show how release of raw data, like Application Program Interfaces (APIs), metadata, bulk data and open source solutions are necessary to improve access to information and develop useful tools. However, almost none of these are required to be released by Canadian municipal open data policies. For instance, with the exception of Toronto, no city authorities are mandated to release APIs and bulk data, according to the policies we found. Although some cities have provided APIs, such as Montréal, and unique identifiers for some datasets in practice, there is an increased potential for inconsistencies among individual departments and agencies without a clear policy mandate.

What now?

Although this research is by no means exhaustive, it serves an illustrative purpose of how local policies can be formulated differently, even within the same country or the same province. It is important for us to keep track of open data policies at the local level, as they have tremendous and direct influences on how government releases data to citizens every day. After that, the question we should ask is about compliance. Currently, Canada has about 50 municipal open data portals available online, but there is still a long way to go to fully realize the G8 Open Data Charter to “national, federal [and] local government.”

The following is our full list comparison on Canadian municipal open data policies: